I can't remember how this ended up on my library wish list, and in reading the description as I was searching for a new audiobook to listen to, I wasn't sure it would be for me. I'm glad I gave it a chance, as it is a smart, thoughtful AND page-turning novel about morality, culpability, sacrifice, and identity.

Baruch Kotler is a former Soviet dissident who spent years in jail after being betrayed to the KGB by a "friend." Once released, he fled to Israel, where he became a notable politician. The book opens with Baruch in Yalta with his young mistress; their affair has just been exposed in the Israeli press, pay-back for his refusal to agree to the government's plan to withdraw from some settlements. While in Yalta, Baruch meets the man who betrayed him so many years ago.

In fewer than 250 pages, Bezmozgis paints a compelling portrait of a man at once undone by, and celebrated for, his imprisonment and subsequent re-emergence. I found the discussion of Jewish identity and the complex realities of Soviet, post-Soviet, Ukrainian, and Israeli society fascinating, especially given the current situation. The serious themes and dark history are alleviated by some dry humor and the real humanity of Baruch, the good and the bad, shines through. ( )

Shortish novel brimming with interesting ideas about fate, faith and fidelity. This was much more about contemporary Israeli politics than I had anticipated having read a collection of Bezmozgis's short stories a decade ago and nothing since. Neat, rather than breathtaking. ( )

Without writing a summary, I would highly recommend this book for book clubs and/or people who like to have philosophical discussions. The book raises many "what would you do" questions that could easily lead to very interesting debates. Topical and thought provoking! ( )

While fashioning a "moral thriller," according to a cover blurb for Betrayers, the author gives us a struggling protagonist whose stand in favor of settlements in Israeli-occupied territory--stolen land---we're supposed to admire. But how can an open-minded reader, aware of the continuing tragedy of the displaced and all but imprisoned Palestinian people, admire the book's putatively heroic main character? The author's earlier work, The Free World, which I liked, brought me to Betrayers. Now, Bezmozgis's moral confusion disqualifies him as a writer to be taken seriously. ( )

The set-up for the main action in David Bezmozgis’s second novel (and Giller Prize finalist), The Betrayers, takes only a few pages. Baruch Kotler, a minister in the Israeli government, and his young mistress Leora have left Israel for Ukraine, fleeing the scandal and resulting media frenzy that their exposed romance has unleashed. Kotler, born in the Soviet Union, a Jew who was initially denied permission to emigrate to Israel and instead jailed as a spy for the Americans, and whose eventual release and move to Israel made him a national hero, has made the curious decision to return to the land of his birth out of “nostalgia.” In Yalta, when they discover that the hotel has no record of their booking, Kotler makes a further curious decision: to return to the bus station and seek alternative accommodations from one of the locals who make a practice of meeting newly arrived tourists with a sign advertising rooms to let. They go with middle-aged Svetlana, another decision, made purely at random, that proves fateful because of the unresolved antagonism that, as it turns out, exists between Kotler and Svetlana’s husband, Vladimir, antagonism rooted in actions of fifty years earlier: the distant, tragic, but never to be forgotten past. From this compelling premise, Bezmozgis weaves a spellbinding tale in which past and present collide, in the process generating great narrative tension and a dizzying moral conundrum for Kotler, not to mention immense anguish and distress for all the main players. It would be unfair to give away more of the plot than that. Bezmozgis, whose unadorned prose in this book recalls the measured, old-world cadences of Jewish novelists like Bernard Malamud and Saul Bellow, draws a vivid if dispiriting portrait of present-day Ukraine, where infrastructure is in shambles and impoverished citizens compete with one another for government handouts and elusive tourist dollars. It will be difficult, however, for readers to shrug off the coincidence that sets the story into motion. Bezmozgis makes no attempt to cloak or apologize for the plot device that brings Kotler into uncomfortable proximity with a past that he is then forced to reassess. The reader must make of it what he/she will. ( )